Why Outsource Your Web Hosting Infrastructure?

Web Hosting Industry vs. In-House Infrastructure

Often in the world of web hosting, dedicated servers, cloud, and vps plans, the big question a company may ask themselves: Do I outsource my web hosting or build it myself in-house?

Quite often, the answers are determined not just by technology, but by business principles, including hardware costs, staff, etc. However, if you consider the big picture including the emergence of the cloud hosting then outsourcing is not only more cost effective, it makes the most sense. To help illustrate some points, I have broken down several questions that you can ask your colleagues and see why outsourcing may be right for you and your business.

Questions to Consider

Is running a data center environment really a core competency for the company, something that differentiates our product or services?

In most cases, the answer is no, because it's the applications that run on top of the IT infrastructure that bring real value to the organization, not the infrastructure itself. Stick with what you are good at. If you're a great manufacturer of socks, why have an IT staff of 200? Make socks!

What is our purchase strategy for hardware if we do it ourselves?

Outsourcing is considered an operating expense (OPEX). There is no hardware to have depreciated over time. When hosting internally you have expensive equipment to purchase as a capital expense (CAPEX) plus maintenance agreements, collocation or utility costs, and other "surprise" investments. Outsourcing presents a predictable monthly recurring expense, which provides numbers you can use to estimate monthly and annual expenses which help determine growth over time.

Are we going to hire multiple people to run our IT environment?

For some companies, this question is important because it relates directly to budgeting. If you have a budget of $100,000/year for staff, you have to divide that among several different types of positions, including systems administration, network administration, engineering and possibly software development. $100,000/year won't get you far if you expect to have all of those positions filled by one person for each position.

If we only have budget enough for 1 person, what happens if they leave the company?

Employee turnover can happen at any time for many reasons. If you have only a small group of people, or even 1 person performing a task in your IT environment, it is quite possible for them to leave your company in a bad position. Documentation and cross training of IT staff is not a common trait and leaves huge concerns for the employee turnover question. Outsourcing removes this risk as you’re under contract with a business that provides and guarantees these services with complete documentation and continuity.

What happens when our internal facility has an outage?

If you have an outage, it can impact sales and operations drastically. An InformationWeek article said businesses polled had 14 hours of IT downtime per year. They also said that equated to, on average, $55,000 in revenue due to IT failures each year. Half of those said IT outages damage their reputation and 18% described the impact on their reputation as "very damaging." Many web hosts hold strong SLA’s, and will customize them based upon the need of the business. The SLA may include 100% network uptime, 1hr hardware replacement, 30 minute emergency response, and resource time guarantees.

What if we have customized needs that won't fit into a normal web hosting package?

Managed web hosting providers that have staff directly in their own data center, such as AIT, have vast expertise, experience, and resources at their disposal. Thus, we have the flexibility to customize plans to fit the need of the business. If something goes wrong, an experienced web host has most likely seen it. This also plays into the question about staff. Web hosts should have certified personally on duty, and also ones that can be called in or escalated to at any time.

What happens if our website becomes popular or viral?

Most outsourced managed web hosting providers can add virtual servers to an environment in less than an hour and add physical infrastructure in a day or two. I have personally seen some of the hottest sites on the internet explode in hours and on-demand resource utilization is need. While virtual machines have provided some way to quickly deploy some technology, the power of physical dedicated servers is never to be outdone. Achieving this same thing by setting up in-house hosting would be incredibly expensive and take much longer. Web hosts can plan for that demand because we know that it's coming from one customer or another.

Do you want to handle all security issues and risk management

This answer definitely includes all of the compliance concerns, such as SAS-70 or SSAE 16, PCI Compliance, HIPAA/HITECH, etc. A managed web host maintains the highest levels of security. AIT performs background checks on our employees before they are hired, and uses video surveillance with records kept for at least 90 days, dual factor authentication to access the secure areas of the facility, and logging of who accessed what and for what reason. We also have an internal security team with specific guidelines that look at security compliance across the organization horizontally, which touches every major department.

How can you provide the best network path to our customers around the world?

Network latency is a huge deal to delivering a service or experience to your customer. Research and Markets reported that network latency has gained precedence over data accuracy and even 10 millisecond differences can win or lose customers. If your customers are national or global, 1 or 2 connections to your data center at your facility will not provide the best network speeds to your end users. By outsourcing your web hosting needs, this allows you to take advantage of the provider’s connections to multiple tier 1 providers over Gigabit-Ethernet lines. In most cases, only a network that is complete meshed network with redundancy and automatic failover will be able to provide the resolution to the latency problem, which guaranteed levels of network performance.

How will we monitor our IT infrastructure?

Monitoring is one of the last, but one of the most important features of an IT infrastructure. Yes, you can pay very little to have someone monitor your services and let you know when there is a problem. But responding promptly to these alerts is the more important part of the monitoring equation. Web hosting providers will have staff on-site and available 24x7x365 to provide responsive diagnosis and resolution to problems before they majorly impact your operations. This is traditionally something web hosting providers will include in their pricing. Some may charge for this, so be careful not to get stuck here. Adding this on your own would cost extra to implement and you would still need people to respond to any generated alerts or emergencies.